


dejé enterrado mi corazón

by smallblueandloud



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Cuban Culture, F/M, Identity Issues, Jake is supportive, amy's latina and that means a lot to her, but nothing's really graphic or violent, cuban amy santiago, discussions of escaping a totalitarian state (cuba obviously), please accept this offering of emotional hurtcomfort in these trying times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:14:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23285356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallblueandloud/pseuds/smallblueandloud
Summary: “Yeah,” Jake says. “How’re you doing?”Amy shrugs, pulling her phone back and avoiding his gaze. “Fine.”“Really? Because you’ve been sitting in a broom closet for an hour. Doesn’t exactly strike me as someone who’s doing fine.”(or, fidel castro dies. being a child of exile is never easy.)
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago, Rosa Diaz & Amy Santiago
Comments: 18
Kudos: 99





	dejé enterrado mi corazón

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so the central premise of this fic is amy's complicated emotions when fidel castro dies. i had to throw out some continuity to make this work, since the episode that aired right after his death on november 25, 2016 was 4x07 mr. santiago (jake meets amy's dad) which probably would've made some kind of reference to fidel's death. so, imagine this happened a bit afterwards, once they're off the night shift. canon? what's canon? a coherent timeline? don't know her.
> 
> the title of this fic comes from the song Cuando Salí De Cuba (When I Left Cuba), which is definitely an anthem of the cuban exile community. it's the same song that amy talks about in the fic. the most famous cuban singer ever that she mentions is, of course, the inimitable Celia Cruz. i really strongly recommend you look up some of her music, just because it's fantastic. (other famous songs of hers include La Vida Es Un Carnaval and Yo Vivire, which is a cover of I Will Survive.) don't worry if you're learning spanish but can't understand her accent - it's a little difficult.
> 
> if y'all are gonna come into the comments section to defend fidel castro or talk politics... don't bother. i'm the daughter of cuban exiles, just like amy, and i don't want to hear it. thanks!

The elevator lights are bright white. Jake squints, still not awake enough to be able to see. “Remind me why we’re here so early?”

It was freezing cold outside too, near the end of fall, so his eyes hurt _and_ he’s shivering. The sun won’t even be out for another hour. Worst morning ever.

“I’m doing a favor for Jeanie from the night shift, remember?” says Amy. “She wanted to get home early enough to have a nap so she could run her daughter’s birthday party.”

“Yeah, but that’s a _you_ favor, not a _me_ favor. I could still be in bed right now. Nice, warm bed... This is terrible. This should count as cruel and unusual punishment, or whatever. Isn’t that illegal? Amy, this is illegal.”

“That only applies to criminals. Also, we spent last night at _my_ apartment. You want to spend extra time in my bed without me?”

“If that’s what it takes,” he sniffs, but he smiles at her to show he doesn’t mean it. They try to keep the same hours so they can spend the maximum amount of time together, in-work and out-of-work, so obviously he had to come with her in the morning. And the terrible morning is _certainly_ better because she’s with him.

Actually, it’s pretty great, because she’s holding his hand and leaning her head on his shoulder and- it’s great, okay? But he has to put up a fuss anyways. For reasons. And pride and whatever.

Sue him, he’s tired.

The elevator opens onto an almost-deserted bullpen. Okay, so maybe Jake was exaggerating how early it is. Most of the night shift has already gone home, it looks like. All who’s left is Jeanie-from-the-night-shift herself and Chronically-Early-Joe.

And Rosa, who always gets to work super early. She says it’s to avoid the morning smalltalk, but he’s pretty sure it’s so she can get first dibs at the coffeemaker.

As Amy goes over to talk to Jeanie, Jake waves at Rosa and then goes over to his desk, starts going over paperwork. Once Amy and Jeanie finish going over details, Amy says goodbye, picks up a stack of files, and comes over to sit at her desk, across from Jake’s.

They work in silence for a few minutes. Jake is trying to finish the stuff he ignored yesterday, and he gets to the second-to-last field when Rosa comes up next to Amy’s desk. She’s walking stiffly, the way she does when she’s feeling awkward.

Jake puts down his paper.

Rosa takes a deep breath and looks down at Amy. “I don’t think you should find out from the internet,” she says. “Fidel Castro died last night.”

“...oh,” says Amy.

Rosa’s gaze moves back up until she’s looking straight in front of her. “Um. If you want a hug, I am prepared to offer fifteen seconds of physical contact.”

One of the most amazing things about Rosa is how terrifyingly compassionate she is, even though it’s clear how nervous it makes her. She _hates_ hugs, but here she is offering one to Amy.

“Oh,” says Amy. “Uh. I’m okay. Thanks for telling me, Rosa.”

“You’re welcome,” says Rosa, stiffly. She nods once at Jake and then speedwalks back to her desk, folding herself into her chair and immediately starting to read a file.

Amy pulls out her phone and frowns at it. Jake leans over his desk. “Hey, um. You okay?”

He has no idea what the reaction to this might entail. He’s only met her parents a handful of times, so he’s never exactly asked about their escape from a dictatorship, much less Amy’s own feelings on the dictator of a country she’s never been to.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she says, absently. “Why didn’t my mom call me? You’d think...”

She types something and waits for it to load. “Yeah, he’s dead alright. Miami’s been up all night. I guess- I guess she remembered that I was up early this morning and didn’t want to wake me up?”

“Probably,” he says. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

She finally glances up at him. She smiles, sort of. “Yeah. Absolutely. It doesn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. He was just one guy. And we need to get to work, anyways.”

“Yeah,” he says.

Her face softens. She reaches out a hand and he grabs it. “Love you,” she says.

“Love you too,” he says, and smiles at her, because he really, truly does.

* * *

It’s almost lunchtime when Terry walks over to Jake’s desk. Jake is trying to finish some work and doesn’t hear his name the first few times, but when Terry almost shouts, he jumps a foot in the air and collapses back on his desk, his hand on his heart. “Was that really necessary, Terrence?”

“You weren’t hearing me!” says Terry, and then looks around. “Have you seen Amy?”

Jake frowns. “What?”

Terry looks around again, making sure no one’s listening, and squats down to Jake’s level. “Have you seen Amy?” he repeats. “She hasn’t been at her desk for an hour, maybe. She doesn’t have any active cases right now, so there’s no reason for her to leave the building, but I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t find her. Do you know if she went for an early lunch or something?”

“I don’t think so,” says Jake, frowning. “We were going to share some leftovers. I’ll look around.”

“Thanks,” says Terry. He stands and walks away. Jake frowns after his retreating butt. No hint of discomfort or anything after squatting. God, it must be nice to be that fit and that hot.

Moving on.

Jake wanders over to Rosa’s desk, trying to look as casual as possible. He puts his hands in his pockets, and then immediately pulls them out to gesture with. “Rosa?”

She doesn’t even look up at him. “What.”

“Amy-” he says, and stops.

Amy’s a chronic rule follower. Everyone knows this.

She _never_ leaves the building for non-work reasons when she’s on the clock. Ever. She only ever leaves for a case or for lunch. Even then, she stops to tell Terry or the captain, to make sure she’s following protocol.

If she hasn’t told Terry, that means she’s still in the building. But disappearing is out of character too. So it has to be for a weird reason, and the weirdest thing that’s happened today was Rosa’s news from the morning. He doesn’t know how she’s feeling, but it must be weird. Ergo: weird action caused by weird emotions, caused by the death of one (1) Caribbean dictator.

“Amy’s been missing for an hour,” he says. “I think it’s because of the news this morning. Do you know where she might be?”

Rosa looks up from her computer, seeming to realize he’s serious. She eyes him. “Why do you want to find her?”

“What?” he says. “Rosa, I’m her boyfriend. If she’s going through something, I want to give her whatever help she needs.”

She studies him for a second. “She’s gonna have mixed feelings. They’re gonna be messy, probably.”

“I _know,_ Rosa,” he says. He loves Amy. He wants to help her. “So she probably needs someone to talk to.”

She nods at him, then goes back to her monitor. He waits, and after a minute, she says, “Amy hides in the broom closet next to the bathroom sometimes.”

“Thank you,” he says, quietly. He stands there for an extra second, not really looking at anything, just thinking about what he’s gonna say. He knows she’s there, and he knows she likes to talk about these things, but he’s never been good at listening to people.

He’ll figure it out. The important thing is that he tries, and that he hears what she says.

He makes his way through the bullpen, down the hallway, to the closet. He pushes the door open slowly, and sure enough, Amy’s in there, sitting on the floor and looking at her phone.

He closes the door behind him and spends a minute just looking at her. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem to be crying. She isn’t expressing any emotions, actually. She just looks tired.

She doesn’t say anything to acknowledge him, so Jake takes that and runs with it. He turns and slides down the wall to sit next to her, looking straight ahead so he doesn’t accidentally read her phone screen. “Hey,” he says.

“Hi,” she says, quiet.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he says.

Wordlessly, she offers him the phone, displaying [an article from the Miami Herald](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/fidel-castro-en/article117204878.html). It’s a picture of a crowd standing on a street in the middle of the night. People are holding pots, pans, signs, Cuban flags. Everyone looks joyous.

“Late night cookout?”

She smiles a little. “No. They were banging them together, celebrating. The whole city went outside to celebrate when they heard.” She shakes her head. “Good old Miami.”

“Yeah,” he says. “How’re you doing?”

She shrugs, pulling her phone back and avoiding his gaze. “Fine.”

“Really? Because you’ve been sitting in a broom closet for an hour. Doesn’t exactly strike me as someone who’s doing fine.”

She tilts her head to rest on his shoulder. Tingles radiate out from the point of contact, even after all these months of them dating. “It’s weird,” she says. “I’m not upset over his death. I mean, like, obviously, I’m glad he’s gone, but it doesn’t change anything. Raul, his brother, is still in power. And I was born here, so I don’t even have the emotions. It’s not personal for me.”

“Yeah.”

“But it affects the people I love so _much,”_ she says. “These are my _people,_ Jake, and they were out in the middle of the night banging pots and pans together because this one guy died. And I don’t- it’s not even- I don’t even-”

She sighs in frustration.

“For everyone here, it’s just some vacation spot super far away. They’d go if they won the lottery or got a raise or something. And I’ve never- Jake, my parents fled with the clothes on their backs and literally nothing else. The government took everything else at the airport. _Fidel’s_ government took everything at the airport. They came here with _nothing_ and now I’m expected to- it’s just- it’s so far away.”

“What do you mean?” he says. There’s definitely something she’s feeling under all this, but he doesn’t understand what it is yet.

“It’s just- it feels like I should be more emotional, you know? I’m sitting here and staring at pictures from Miami, and I don’t _feel_ anything. I’m just tired. But I _should_ feel something.”

She takes a deep breath. It’s shaky. “I’m supposed to be Cuban, Jake. I’m not _supposed_ to feel nothing, but I- I even forget that I’m Cuban, a lot of the time. I don’t think about it. I’m here, in Brooklyn, where you can’t even find a decent tostada without driving to Newark, and it’s so far- it’s one tiny island, and I’ve never even been there, and like- look, it’s not a big deal that he’s dead and all. But- but it’s bringing up a lot of other emotions.”

“Yeah,” says Jake, reaching out to take her hand. _Try to remind her that she’s not alone._ “That happens a lot. Like, one time my mom dated this guy, and-”

“-you resented it because you wanted your dad back?”

He frowns. Point already made. “Yeah. Okay, so you know that story. But like, it’s not your job to be a Cuban mascot. I mean, I get what you mean. I forget I’m Jewish a lot, and that’s a really sucky feeling.”

“Yeah.”

Secret weapon: a direct quote from the queen of advice herself, Karen Peralta.

“But my mom said something really good when I told her that. She said I’m Jewish no matter what, and nothing’s gonna change that. I’m always going to be, no matter if I’m thinking about it at the moment or not. A lot of me is influenced by it, you know? Even if I celebrate Christmas with you or I don’t go to temple very often. I’m still Jewish.”

“Of course,” says Amy. He loves her for the complete absence of doubt in her voice.

“Same thing with you. You’re Amy, and Amy’s Cuban. But that’s not everything about you. I mean, you’re busy. You’re living your life! You have to help Jeanie-from-the-night-shift and try to impress the captain and remind me to do the laundry.”

“You’re pretty good about doing the laundry,” she says, but she laughs, so he counts it as a win.

He squeezes her hand.

“But you get what I mean? You’re always going to be Cuban, and it doesn’t matter that you’re not a living diversity insert.”

“Yeah,” she says, turning her head so she’s faceplanted into his shoulder.

After a minute, slightly muffled, “I know that _logically,_ but I guess it’s good to hear. I don’t really believe it all the time.”

“You don’t?”

Amy is Cuban. He’s never doubted this. To hear that _she_ doubts it is... surprising, to say the least.

“My family is Cuban, okay?” she says. “They all react to certain things in certain ways - like, for example, Fidel dying. But I don’t react in the same way as them, because I was born here. But since I’m not reacting the way that they do, the imposter syndrome kicks in.”

“Oh. Yeah. But your family’s just one family, right? I mean, not everyone reacts like they do, even the people born in Cuba.”

“You don’t-” She sighs, sitting up straight. “It’s different for Latinos in exile. The home country is so ingrained. I guess it’s that our culture is built around exile- but then, it’s also that it’s a _recent_ culture of exile. Like, my parents _remember_ Cuba. They don’t want to go back, of course, but it’s still _home_ and they’re always going to miss it. And that’s a huge part of Hispanic identity.”

She goes quiet, thinking. Eventually, she says:

“There’s this song. It’s very famous. I don’t know who wrote it, or when, but it’s called _Cuando salí de Cuba._ It means _When I Left Cuba._ It’s basically the anthem for exiles? There’s this one recording by the most famous Cuban singer ever, and- well, anyways, you don’t even know who she is. But it’s a super important song. The chorus translates to something like, _When I left Cuba, I left my heart, I left my soul. When I left Cuba, I left my heart buried in the land.”_ She takes a deep breath. “It’s more poetic in Spanish, obviously.”

He doesn’t know what to say. “It’s beautiful.”

“Yeah, my dad always cries when we play it. It’s my grandmother’s famous song. But like, there aren’t songs like that for Americans. There’s the usual nationalism, but it’s not- it’s not _personal_ like this, not emotional like this. Missing the mother country is part of our _identity._ And I don’t- I don’t miss the mother country. I was _born_ here. I’m a cop here. I’m _proud_ to be from here, even though god knows America isn’t perfect-”

“Yeah, every part of our history involves us oppressing some group of people,” says Jake. “It sucks, we all know that.”

“Yeah,” she says. “But if it’s completely central to Cuban identity to miss the home country, and personally hate Fidel, and remember the hardships- and I _don’t_ do any of those things...”

“Amy, a reaction isn’t what makes you Cuban,” says Jake. He can do this. He’s good at arguing. He’s good at arguing specifically with Amy. “Neither are feelings about a guy who honestly kind of sucked.”

“He sucked a lot,” says Amy, making a face.

“Yeah!” he says. “Whatever. Either way, the point is that you _are_ Cuban, Amy. It doesn’t matter that you aren’t reacting to Fidel’s death. Although - and hear me out on this - isn’t worrying about your non-reaction... a reaction?”

She blinks for a second. Then she shakes her head. “When did you get so emotionally competent?”

“What are you talking about? I’m the _king_ of emotional competence, Amy. Amy. Amy- Amy, why are you laughing? Oh, come on, you didn’t have to start laughing _immediately-”_

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, grinning, “oh god, it was just _so_ unrealistic, you know, and I couldn’t take it-”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh away,” he says, and crosses his arms.

She laughs for another minute. The sound rushes through him, warms his cheeks and chest and toes. He loves this woman. He really, truly _loves_ her. He gets to make her laugh. He loves making her laugh.

Finally, she calms down. “Oh, Jake, I’m sorry, it’s just- I had to get it out.”

“I know,” he says, throws his hands up. “Laughing at my expense. My own girlfriend. Of course.”

“Always,” she says, and then she turns to smile at him. “You’re right, though. I mean, obviously I’m Cuban. Even Charles’ coffee isn’t strong enough for me. I talk with my hands, I’m loud, I’m undeniably sexy...”

“I don’t know enough about being Cuban to dispute that,” Jake says, with a straight face.

“Shut up. It’s just hard to remember. It doesn’t seem like that stuff matters as much as having grand emotional reactions, you know?”

“Yeah,” he says, turning serious. “I don’t know what to tell you, Amy. I have the same doubts sometimes. Honestly, I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you just get over.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Just gotta keep going, I guess. And drinking coffee.”

“You know, excessive coffee isn’t good for you.”

“Does it look like I care?”

She stands up and offers him a hand, pulls him up, brushes the dust off her jacket. “Alright,” she says. “Do we still have time for lunch?”

He thinks about the time, and then realizes he doesn’t have to. “I mean, it’s been a hard day for you, Amy,” he says, stroking an imaginary beard. “You may require an extra long lunch break to recover.”

“Hm,” says Amy, stroking her own imaginary beard. “You may be right, Jake. I believe I _am_ feeling emotionally fraught.”

“Good,” he says, and drops his hand from his face. He grins at her. “Leftovers, then?”

“No,” says Amy, narrowing her eyes. “I think I’m in the mood for Cuban food. You okay with that?”

“As you wish, my lady,” he says, offers her his arm, and then they walk out of the broom closet.

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout to the lesbean for looking over this for me. a line in her honor that didn't make it into the fic proper: “The home country is so ingrained, you know? It’s the exile thing, I’m sure, and we’re not super open about it with other people- well, I mean, except the Chileans. I have some Chilean friends, they can’t shut _up_ about being from Chile, and like, good for them, but- anyway. Not what I was talking about.” (she's chilean and can't shut up about it. nerd.)
> 
> i projected pretty heavily onto this fic, as you might've noticed. if you're hispanic and wanna talk about it, hit me up [on tumblr](https://smallblueandloud.tumblr.com)! i'm also able and ready to answer questions about cuban culture for the purpose of writing cuban characters. (i'm half and half, so if i don't know the answer to a question, i'll ask a family member with more Cuban Clout(tm) than me.) requests for spanish help should go to someone actually fluent, though, lol.
> 
> stay safe, y'all, and stay healthy. thanks for reading.


End file.
